A bolt hold open lever generally operates to inhibit forward motion of the bolt assembly of a firearm after discharge of the last round of ammunition has been fed from a magazine, such as a box magazine of the firearm. However, rotary magazines typically do not house any mechanism that can engage/actuate the bolt hold open lever of a firearm upon firing of the last round. In particular, with rotary magazines, a round that is being stripped out of the magazine by the bolt is generally held in place by a next round in the cylinder, but the last round to be fed does not have another round following it to hold it in position. As a result, an extrusion on the rotary cylinder generally is used to lift the last round into place to be stripped out by the bolt. Due to limited space inside of most rotary magazines, however, the extrusion on the cylinder typically contacts the feed throat while holding the last round in place, such that, there is little to no additional rotation of the cylinder provided to operate a bolt hold open lever after the last round has left the magazine. Therefore, typical rotary magazines generally cannot activate a conventional bolt hold open lever, such as for an AR or M4 style firearm, to arrest forward movement of the bolt assembly after the last round has been fired. This can cause damage to the firearm as the bolt is moved to its forward position without a round to engage or strip. While rotary magazines have been developed with parts that are located so as to block the bolt, they generally operate to block the bolt at or toward the end of its return path of travel, where the inertial force of the moving bolt is substantial, which force can damage or break such blocking parts.
Accordingly, it can be seen a need exists for a rotary magazine with a bolt hold open assembly to inhibit movement of the bolt as it is cycled forward after firing of the last round, and which addresses the foregoing and other related, and unrelated, problems in the art.